The Meta

Compuware refocus

In a 12-page e-mail to employees from late March detailing “The Road to 2.0,” Paul said rumors that Compuware might abandon its mainframe offerings “couldn’t be further from the truth. Why would we do that? We have a vast customer base representing well over $400 million in annual revenue in mainframe markets.”

Therein also lies one of the reasons for the Compuware 2.0 effort. “A lot of our long-term mainframe customers didn’t know we did distributed computing products, and vice versa,” Vines said.

Vines said while nearly all Compuware’s customers vouched for the fact that the company’s products—including portfolio management, IT service management, development tools, testing and QA (quality assurance) solutions, and mainframe solutions—help make their IT systems better, a few went further to say Compuware’s solutions “rock.” Thus the “Rock IT” notion was born.

In addition to the growth in mainframe software sales, Paul said Compuware posted 38 percent growth in overall license revenue in the fourth quarter, as well as 49 percent growth in total product commitment, which he called “the truest indicator of our software-related activity in the quarter.”